Get a crash course on Network Monitoring delivered right to your inboxThis free 7-day email course provides a primer to the philosophy, theory, and fundamental concepts involved in IT monitoring. Lessons will explain not only how to perform various monitoring tasks, but why and when you should use them. Sign up now.

Review your current product licenses and determine if you need to make any changes. You can download any updated license keys for your upgrade through your Customer Portal. Verify any license upgrades and needs with your SolarWinds account manager or contact SolarWinds.

Do you need to migrate?

You may need to migrate products and databases to new dedicated servers or to shared servers. Check if you need to migrate by reviewing new requirements, your products, and your current environment.

Migrating adds time to your upgrade, but you have the best opportunity to update to new servers during an upgrade.

Gather credentials

Make sure you have all account credentials, SQL database credentials, your SolarWinds account, and local admin server credentials.

Build your upgrade path

Use the Upgrade Product Advisor to build your upgrade path. If you have NPM, upgrade NPM first. If you have SAM but not NPM, upgrade SAM first. The Product Upgrade Advisor always provides the upgrade process in steps.

We recommend downloading a PDF of your upgrade path from the Product Upgrade Advisor tool. You can use it as a checklist as you complete upgrades.

Run all Windows updates

Before upgrading, check for and run all Microsoft Windows Updates on your main poller, all additional pollers, and all additional web servers. As you upgrade, if a Windows update runs, your system may reboot as needed by Windows.

Schedule the upgrade

Set up the maintenance window, preferably off-peak hours. Depending on the number of products, size of database(s), and size of environment, you may need hours to complete your upgrade.

Upgrades will require polling engines and SolarWinds services to be offline for a length of time, causing you to lose a portion of polling data.

Notify your company

Send a message to your company of the upgrade schedule and maintenance window. If you need additional help, contact and allocate specific staff to be available.

How long does an upgrade take?

The time it takes to complete an upgrade depends on:

Hardware

Database server performance and database size

Number of additional pollers

Number of additional web servers

Environment performance

Number of modules being upgraded

Number of devices being polled

Since every configuration is different, we cannot predict exactly how long your upgrade will take. Coming soon, we are compiling feedback with the THWACK community about upgrade times to help give you a ballpark estimate. Through this guide, we include steps and tips to help reduce time for your upgrade.

Gotchas you should review

When upgrading to 2017.1 with custom menus, you can not see the Performance Dashboard link in the menu. For details, see this article.

If you have edited resource properties, the All Groups resource may be empty after upgrading Orion Platform 2016.1 products. This includes NPM 12 and SAM 6.2.4.

When upgrading Orion Platform 2016.1 products, using the group by feature for custom properties may return no results, and the data loading may hang or not complete. All regular functionality is unaffected by the issue. All regular functionality is unaffected by the issue. Orion Platform 2017.1 products resolve this issue.

If you have written your own code, such as changing SolarWinds .css files or adding .js files, or been directed to make changes by Support, the code may be overwritten during the upgrade. You can learn more about upgrading with custom code here.

Always check that you have enough hard drive space for zipped and unzipped installers. One unzipped installer could consume a couple GBs of space.

During your upgrade, use the Scalability Engine Installer. If you use downloaded installers or the installer bundle, you must install one product and version at a time. The versions must match between the main and additional poller or you will receive a Database Configuration Failure Error.

If you are upgrading from a very early or End of Life SolarWinds product version, you may want to install a new product instead of performing an upgrade, saving or migrating your data. SolarWinds Support can provide the best advice for these upgrade scenarios.

If you have enabled SolarWinds High Availability, you must disable High Availability before you can upgrade. You must have the same versions of SolarWinds products on your primary and secondary server before you can re-enable your HA pools. See the Upgrade with HA section.

Prepare your environment to upgrade

When you are ready to upgrade, complete these steps. They include the common actions you need to complete before upgrading products.

If you have a test or staging environment, we highly recommend testing the upgrade first. You cannot roll back an installation once completed.

1. Back up the DB

Snapshot your VMs

Back up your SolarWinds SQL database. If you need help, please check your vendor's site for documentation and instructions.

If you have your database on a VM, create a snapshot or copy of your VM.

You cannot roll back an upgrade. Always create a database backup.

2. Back up custom code (Optional)

(Optional) Back up your custom code. When upgrading, any custom additions or changes to the interface will be saved over.

3. Back up Report Writer reports (Optional)

Upgrading to an Orion Platform 2016.1 or later product? You can skip this step.

If you use Report Writer reports (NPM 10.5 and earlier) or still have legacy reports, back up the reports folder to save your custom reports:

To ensure the best performance on your server host and provide full file access, exclude specific file paths and directories from anti-virus software scans. See this article for details.

You can also place your systems behind a firewall to completely disable your anti-virus software during an upgrade.

5. Stop services

Stop services in the Orion Service Manager on the main polling engine, all additional polling engines, and all web servers.

Upgrade with SolarWinds HA

To upgrade a server pair in a SolarWinds High Availability (HA) pool, follow the instructions for upgrading your product with the following differences.

If you have enabled SolarWinds High Availability, you must disable HA before you can upgrade. All SolarWinds product versions must match on the primary and secondary servers before you can re-enable your HA pools.

These instructions assume you have an HA pool already created and enabled. For more information on SolarWinds HA, see this article.

1. Disable the HA pool

The HA pool must be disabled to begin upgrading. If you upgrade prior to disabling, the pool is automatically disabled.

Toggle High Availability to On. The Orion Web Console verifies all SolarWinds product versions match across the HA pair before enabling. If you receive errors, check your product versions.

Upgrade a single product

This checklist includes the common steps for upgrading a single product in your environment. You may only own one product, or may only need to upgrade a single product in a multi-module environment.

Upgrade Tip! If you upgrade multiple versions of the same product, skip the website optimization step in the Configuration Wizard. Only run this step with the last installation to save time.

1. Installation step using the upgrade path (Repeatable)

Following the upgrade path, download the product installation file from your Customer Portal in the My Downloads area. Save this file to your systems.

Depending on the version, you may have a smart bundle of all install files per system, separate files to download, or the standalone installer.

If you have an issue running the installer, check the following:

Verify the installer is not blocked. Right-click the installer file, select Properties. Check is Unblock is available and select.

Right-click the installer file and select Run as Administrator.

Main Poller: Unzip, upgrade, and run the Configuration Wizard.

Each Additional Polling Engine: Download and run the Additional Polling Engine installer, and run the Configuration Wizard. For Orion 2016.2 and later products, use the Orion Scalability Engine Installer.

Each Additional Web Server: Download and run the Additional Web Server installer, and run the Configuration Wizard. For Orion 2016.2 and later products, use the Orion Scalability Engine Installer.

During an additional web server upgrade, you can point users to the website of the main polling engine, or to any web server that is already upgraded.

After installing this product and version on your entire environment, check the product and version as done on your downloaded Upgrade Path PDF or list. If you have additional versions to install, repeat this step.

Recommendations: Orion Scalability Engine Installer

When you upgrade your additional polling engine (APE) and additional web server (AWS), use the unified Scalability Engine Installer if available. This new lightweight installer is far faster for upgrading your APE and AWS than installing one module at a time!

Install your modules on the Main Poller. When complete, you will need to upgrade your additional polling engines and additional web servers.

Run the appropriate installer on your APE and AWS. This single installer will upgrade all Orion modules on each of these servers. If you are upgrading one or more modules, all modules are upgraded.

2. Upgrade Orion Agents

If you have the Global Agent Setting to Allow automatic updates (enabled by default), the Orion Agents automatically upgrade in the background. Agents are tied to their release version. You can skip manually upgrading agents if the option is enabled.

The upgrades take a bit of time to complete, but will not require any actions. Agents update at a throttled number of 10 to limit the impact on the polling engine. As soon as one agent completes upgrading, another agent takes its place so there are always 10 active threads until all agents are upgraded.

Select all agents needing updates and click More Actions > Update. The agents upgrade in the background.

You can enable the option through Settings > All Settings > Agent Settings and click Define Global Agent Settings.

3. Start the engines

Start services in the Orion Service Manager on the main polling engine, all additional polling engines, and all web servers.

After the upgrade check your system

All product versions should be installed properly. Open the application and verify the versions displayed in the footer of the Web Console. Try current and new features with your system to check performance and expected functionality. If you run into issues, check the troubleshooting tips.

Troubleshooting

If you receive errors, try the following:

If you experience issues and are not on the latest product versions, we recommend completing a full upgrade. Use the Product Upgrade Advisor to create the upgrade path. Many of these updates solve issues you may experience part way through your upgrade.

Check our Success Center for troubleshooting. We recommend searching the name of the product, the version number, any error codes or messages displayed, and the general issue you found.

If you receive (500) internal server error after an upgrade, use the Orion permission checker to make sure your Group Policy is not locked. See this article for full details.

If your views do not load when first opening the console, run the Configuration Wizard again.

If an issue occurs you need additional help with, contact Support. We recommend gathering diagnostics, a screenshot of the issue, and any error codes you receive. Attach and add this information to your ticket. You may also want to gather additional diagnostics on your additional pollers and web servers.

Legal notices

This document may not be reproduced by any means nor modified, decompiled, disassembled, published or distributed, in whole or in part, or translated to any electronic medium or other means without the prior written consent of SolarWinds. All right, title, and interest in and to the software and documentation are and shall remain the exclusive property of SolarWinds and its respective licensors.

SOLARWINDS DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, CONDITIONS OR OTHER TERMS, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, ON SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION FURNISHED HEREUNDER INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION THE WARRANTIES OF DESIGN, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL SOLARWINDS, ITS SUPPLIERS, NOR ITS LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES, WHETHER ARISING IN TORT, CONTRACT OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY EVEN IF SOLARWINDS HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

The SolarWinds and other SolarWinds marks, identified on the SolarWinds website, as updated from SolarWinds from time to time and incorporated herein, are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered or pending registration in other countries. All other SolarWinds trademarks may be common law marks or registered or pending registration in the United States or in other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks contained and/or mentioned herein are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.